Satisfaction—is the Agent
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: Her mother had warned her marriage would not be all champagne and violets.


"Our blessed Lord in Heaven, it's bloody cold!" Sam exclaimed. She'd lingered in the bed as long as she could but nature called and the tea wouldn't brew itself and Adam was rotten at making it the way she liked. She'd sort of wriggled her wooly dressing gown around herself from the bed's warmth, to Adam's great enjoyment, as the wriggling did all sorts of evidently quite enticing things to her bosom and bum, but there was nothing to be done for her poor feet since she'd not left her house-slippers, a pale grey now that they couldn't be any other color, close enough to the bed.

She scampered across the icy floorboards to the dilapidated basket chair her mother had been convinced would be "just darling" in their bedroom which was where she'd left the slippers the night before, when Adam had swept her off her feet, sans said slippers, and carried her off to bed. It had been madly romantic though she had to admit the chair was roughly three feet from the bed and she'd clung to Adam with the tenacity of an Amazonian vine to avoid the possibility of being dumped along the (admittedly brief) way. He'd been murmuring French poetry in a husky voice, Verlaine or Baudelaire she supposed, and even though she could only truly make out _je t'aime_ and _ma cherie_ and _je t'adore_ , none of which were in the poems themselves but Adam extemporizing, she'd been eagerly swept away and the night had been a rousing success, all bright passion and incontrovertible endearments and Adam's blue eyes just gazing at her as if she were the Elgin marbles, Michelangelo's David and the Enigma code all wrapped into one delightful armful of rosy English womanhood. Oh, they had enjoyed themselves! The guttering candle had seemed charming them and not so frowsy as in the properly weak English daybreak and she hadn't thought twice about the slippers. She must bear it now, for Queen and country, for tea and the fond smile on Adam's handsome face when she returned, his assiduous desire to make sure she was not troubled by any crumbs of the toast she'd managed, around her mouth or fallen into the gaping neck of her nightdress or possibly, obscurely behind her knee; he particularly didn't wish for any crumbs there it seemed and she must oblige him—what else could a wife do? After a time, during which their tea, sadly but indubitably, grew cold, it became clear there was not one crumb left that could be even the remotest trouble. Post-exertion and ante-tea, she had a tendency to grow philosophical, shades of Uncle Aubrey which she hadn't quite clarified to Adam, and this morning was no exception, even if the slippers were a bit nearer this go.

"Aren't there the strangest things to be thankful for, Adam? Besides the lack of crumbs in this bed?" she said, her head against his heartbeat. He was always so wonderfully warm, from those flame-blue eyes to his slender feet, she'd never tire of nestling close and chatting. He seemed equally pleased with her tendency to wander at times like this, if his lovely warm hand at the base of her spine and oh-so deliciously below was any indication.

"I don't know quite what you mean, darling Sam."

"Well, you being shot, that was a blessing," she began and he laughed, a dear, rumbly laugh she felt all along her skin.

"I'd hardly thought of it like that," he said. "It did rather hurt."

"Flesh wounds do. You ought to—consider it a blessing, that it. I shouldn't have given you the time of day otherwise and then where would we be?" she said, pressing a bit closer to prove her point but suggesting the opposite. There was probably a Latin expression from logic to describe her argument, but her education had run more to fiddly early English history filled with Eadwins and Eagleswythas and endless Wordsworth and Tintern Abbey and a fair amount of botany, nothing that was particularly helpful at the current moment.

"I see your point," he said and she sighed with satisfaction of several kinds. "But do go on."

"You're absolute rubbish at running a boarding house, there's that, and you can't fix a stopped drain," she went on as he went on stroking her like a treasured Persian cat; it made it a little more difficult to remember how she meant to go on but she would persevere.

"Yes. My faults are myriad," he said she heard the smile in his voice without looking.

"It's not only you. It turns out that I'm far more a vicar's daughter than I'd thought, because I simply hated posing for Sir Leonard, even though it was for Art and History would see it that way, and that was good because if I'd liked it, perhaps I wouldn't have gone back to Mr. Foyle after Sir Leonard died, I'd have found some other bohemian artist to model for and then we never would have met or if we did, I'd have just dismissed you as another former intelligence officer down on his luck, struggling to adjust," she said. He had looked smart in his suit and he'd not been brash and sure of himself like Andrew or Joe, she'd quite liked him well before he'd taken the bullet and she'd been forced to see him in a state of undress.

"It does sound all rather tenuous the way you put it. From your end, in any case," he said, punctuating his statement with a squeeze to the round end of her he much appreciated and eliciting a rather predictable squeal. "I can't say I would have relied on serendipity to make sure of you though. I had intentions from the first time I met you."

"Devious intentions?" she said hopefully.

"The most devious cloaked in the most honorable. How else could I get past your Mr. Foyle and your mother?" he asked. If he could make a proper cup of tea, he really would be perfect, she thought. Well, he might spice up his monologues on zoning but she wasn't sure how.

"And there's something else to be thankful for. Suppose you hadn't met Mr. Foyle at first and thought you could cozen me along. He would have seen through you in an instant," she said firmly.

"Oh yes. He sees through everything, doesn't he? And yet, d'you think we could leave off talking about him now? It's Sunday morning and we haven't got to get to church for another hour…"

"Am I to just give up on tea then?" she asked. She'd made greater sacrifices.

"For now. Just think how grateful you'll be for the next cup," he said. Marriage was a puzzle she was finding it easier to solve every day and she knew enough to simply twine her arms around him and let him quench her thirst as he would. Her slippers were sitting in a lozenge of sunlight and wouldn't be quite so out of reach the next time she had to leave the bed.


End file.
